Call Down the Moon

Meggie. Oh, Meggie. Has there ever been anyone more sane than you in your honesty? Anyone more direct, more free of guile, more uncaring about what the material world might give you, yet more caring about what beauty the world’s natural bounties hold? Anyone ever more willing to love with no conditions attached?

From the moment Meggie had entered his life, she had entwined herself around his heart, and that heart had opened and grown and learned to embrace, just as she had taught his spirit to fly.

Meggie beamed. “It will be an adventure. A perfect, wonderful adventure.”

“Something tells me, my dear Meggie,” he said, lifting her hand to his mouth and kissing her fingertips one by one, “that life with you will always be an adventure.”

He smiled, and Meggie felt as if the sun had come out and brightened over half a lifetime of gray skies.

I felt as if I had seen an angel, a being not entirely of this world, and yet the world suddenly made more sense than it ever had before. I have not been the same since.

Life had been dictated to her, defined by loss, shaped by helplessness. She’d learned early on that her life would never be like everyone else’s, and she had long since developed a pragmatic core that concealed her loneliness.

The Mabey sisters were a classic example, and no one had ever locked them up.